“We all knew that it was going to happen. I had been over to
France and I was bi-lingual. I loved France. I was a total Francophile.”

She was clearly appalled at the prospect of what might
happen to the country she had fallen for as the war clouds gathered.

When war was declared Olivia decided that she wanted to do
something to help. Displaying extraordinary courage she decided that with her
language skills the best way she could support the war effort was to travel to
France on her own and join the French Army.

“My one wish at that time was to be able to fight in the
war. My whole idea was to get myself over to France and join the French Army,
and I did it.”

The age of majority at the time was 21, so, with Olivia
being just twenty years old she was effectively still a minor which puts her
single-handed action in heading to France alone into even sharper perspective. She dismisses the idea that her incredible
story of bravery and sheer single-minded determination was anything out the
ordinary.

“I had managed to establish contact with a British official
in Paris, it was the Military Governor whose daughter I knew, and I made
arrangements to travel to France by boat.”

When pressed on how she actually managed to put these plans
in place, and achieve her objective of joining up with the French army on
arrival, Olivia just smiles and says:

“Well, you always know somebody, don’t you?”

After initial training in Paris, Olivia’s unit was moved
south but as the Nazi advance across the country gathered pace she was told one
day that her colleagues were surrendering to the Germans. Fearing the danger of
falling into enemy hands she decided to go it alone. She was well aware of the
potential consequences for an English woman of being captured by the German
army but if she was afraid, she certainly doesn’t show it.

“I remember walking across a big bridge, this would have
been right down south, and a car stopped beside me. I thought, oh b…… hell, but
it turned out he was on the right side and he took me by car some distance and
I managed to then pick up another lift.
Eventually I made I made it to Saint Jean De Luz.”

From this port down, right down in the Basque Country,
Olivia managed to establish another contact who got her aboard a British
Destroyer that was in the harbour awaiting departure. After a four day voyage,
Olivia arrived back in Plymouth.

“I then contacted my parents who said “Oh good, you are
back” and they came and picked me up from the port as if nothing much had
happened and I had been away on a bit of a day trip. It was very British!”

However, Olivia’s involvement with the French and the war
was far from over. In Saint Jean De Luz she had been given some papers and had
been asked to try and get them to De Gaulle if she made it back to Britain.

“So I knew I had to make for De Gaulle, he was only a
Colonel then, and I met him in Carlton Gardens in London where the French had
been given an office. Of course, it was difficult to get to see him as the
security had to be terribly careful who they introduced him to but I actually
knew the French Ambassador who was a friend of one of my aunts from London and
so it all came together.”

Olivia was offered a job in the expanding French operation
in London. As she was bilingual here skills were highly valued and she
undertook translation work, including for De Gaulle himself who spoke little or
no English.

In another extraordinary turn Olivia also ended up as a driver for De Gaulle.

“Well, he didn’t have a car, so I phoned my father and asked
if he could lend him one and he said yes, that’s fine, so long as you drive it
and that’s how I ended up as a driver for De Gaulle in those early days in
London.”

We were lucky enough to be able to take a copy of a picture
of Olivia in her car sitting outside the HQ building at Carlton Gardens
awaiting orders, chatting to a guard in full Free French Army uniform.

Olivia remembers that there was an understandable fear that
De Gaulle would be assassinated and that there was intense security around him
and the entire exiled administration. She also talked about life in London
during those days and how everyone lived in the knowledge that the next day
could be their last.

She was at the Café De Paris when it took a direct hit
during the Blitz on the 8th March 1941 and 34 people were killed and
many more seriously injured, the majority on the dance floor which Olivia had
just left but the effect of the bomb left her with damaged hearing for the rest
of her life.

Olivia was once again lucky to escape with her life. The
Café de Paris had been an expensive and exclusive venue before 1939 but after
war was declared it dropped its prices and was popular with off-duty service
personnel. After the bombing it remained closed for the rest of the war and
didn’t re-open until 1948.

Olivia eventually got married and left London and her job
with the exiled French and had no further involvement with the war effort but
her story is extraordinary and deserves a much wider audience.

Her memories, like those of so many who displayed incredible courage and bravery during the war years, form an important part of our understanding of the personal motivation of those who were prepared to sacrifice everything.